Thumos is a Greek word that we often translate as "spiritedness" or "passion." It implies a spirit of contention or fight, like having a beer with your buddy and loudly insisting that Dylan was cooler than the Beatles. This is an excuse for spirited posts that follow my more or (often) less disciplined passions.

Saturday, October 23, 2004

Mike Aquilina sends us this excellent op-ed from Archbishop Chaput, a great corrective to the nonsense in last week's Times piece by Mark Noll. In case the anyone was confusing the "seamless garment" with a fig leaf for abortion support.

Friday, October 15, 2004

The good folks at the New York Times weigh in again, this time criticizing the beatification of Charles I, the last Hapsburg emperor of Austria-Hungary. No mention is made of whether he was a faithful Catholic, displayed sanctity and virtue, led a holy life, or any of that "saint" stuff. Apparently, being a monarch should disqualify him. And some people say he was "weak." Fancy being weak when you inherit a crumbling, war-torn empire at 29! Everything reduces to the political in the view of the Times.

We can't wait until they take this to the logical conclusion and demand that the College of Cardinals be replaced by the editorial board of the Times, and the elevation of "Pinch" Sulzberger to the position of Pontiff. Then we could look forward to the establishment of abortion as a sacrament.

Nixon's most prominent dirty-trickster Donald Segretti had a term for antics like John Kerry's slimey tactic of dragging Cheney's daughter into the debate: "ratf***ing." (Maybe in Kerry's case, it should be called "hamsterf***ing," in light of Kerry's curious admitted predisposition to get intimate with these animals.) It was as gratuitous as it was ugly. Exploitation of opponents' family members does not belong in this race, period. Kerry and Edwards owe the Cheneys an apology. (Good luck getting one.) Kudos to Mickey Kaus at Slate for running with this.

Monday, October 11, 2004

Mark Noll explains why good Catholics don't have to oppose abortion at the ballot box:

During the eight years of the Reagan presidency, the number of legal abortions increased by more than 5 percent; during the eight years of the Clinton presidency, the number dropped by 36 percent. The overall abortion rate (calculated as the number of abortions per 1,000 women between the ages of 15 and 44) was more or less stable during the Reagan years, but during the Clinton presidency it dropped by 11 percent.

There are many reasons for this shift. Yet surely the traditional Democratic concern with the social safety net makes it easier for pregnant women to make responsible decisions and for young life to flourish; among the most economically disadvantaged, abortion rates have always been and remain the highest. The world's lowest abortion rates are in Belgium and the Netherlands, where abortion is legal but where the welfare state is strong. Latin America, where almost all abortions are illegal, has one of the highest rates in the world.

Got that? Bill Clinton actually fought abortion by doing absolutely nothing to restrict abortion, including partial birth abortion. He also spent considerably less on the welfare state than President Bush. So why again does Clinton deserve credit? Note also that all that matters to Noll are the raw numbers, not the effect on a Christian, democratic society of having judges designate child murder as a hollowed touchstone of civil government.

Noll also has one of the worst summaries of Just War theory that I have ever read. Noll should and probably does know better -- he's a philosophy professor at Notre Dame. He also makes it sound like the Kyoto treaty and socialized medicine were mentioned in Humanae Vitae, right before that stuff on contraception. The issue of deliberate killing of innocent children is equated with prudential questions concerning criminal punishment, stewardship of economy and ecology, etc.

Noll's title alludes to a conflict never mentioned in the article: "conscience" vs. "religion." My impression was that conscience was, in the Catholic view, to be formed and informed by faith. This title plays much more to the Times audience, who assume that good Catholics are torn between their enlightened modern consciences and their medieval popery.

The New York Times has found another subservient Catholic who puts loyalty to party line above clarity on doctrine. (Richard McBrien and Andrew Greeley must have been out of town.) The rest of you have to learn, in the words of a New York Times editor as cited by Richard John Neuhaus, "how we do things here."

(Hat tip: Pat Schuchman.)

UPDATE:

Mike Aquilina sends me a link to this piece: Commonweal : Catholics, Politics & Abortion. It's an article by Kenneth Woodward taking on Mario Cuomo, whose 1984 speech at Notre Dame on the subject has become the rhetorical model for most Catholic pro-abortion politicians. Cuomo also responds to Woodward. Haven't finished it myself, but both men are generally worth reading.

Here's why the G.O.P. should not worried. Kerry looked presidential, was calm and composed, spoke well, had better style, and made no obvious gaffes. Bush, by contrast, sounded tired, slurred his speech, missed opportunities to counter, was visibly annoyed during some of Kerry's answers. Kerry shoots up in the polls, no downside for the Dems, right?

Not so fast. There are a number of things that are coming back to haunt Kerry: The "Global Test," the advocacy of a freeze on nuclear bunker-buster development (a weapon that would be ideally suited to rogue nations and terrorists sheltering destructive weapons in underground redoubts), the advocacy of delivering nuclear fuel to Tehran and conceding to Pyongyang in their desire for bilateral talks with the U.S. I don't hear similar issues being raised by the Democrats -- they seem content to focus on a generic tone of failure, etc.

If Kerry won the debate on style, made no unintentional gaffes, looked well-rested, lucid, etc., it becomes more difficult to argue that Kerry didn't intend these, indeed that these are not the well-thought out and consistent positions of a man who supported both a U.S. nuclear-freeze and establishing a warm relationship with the Sandinistas in the 80's (his eulogies and warm praises for the late President Reagan notwithstanding).